Question: What is xylene and a hepothoholgy (sorry about the spelling)

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  1. Dear Under13ds; I looked up xylene In Dorland’s Medical Dictionary, ‘xylene is dimethylbenzene; an antiseptic hydrocarbon from methyl alcohol or coal tar; used in microscopy as a solvent and clarifier’

    I also found that mixed xylenes are used in the production of ethylbenzene, as solvents in products such as paints and coatings, and are blended into gasoline. It is very toxic solvent because ‘Overexposure to xylene most commonly depresses the central nervous system, producing headaches, nausea, dizziness, and drowsiness, and irritates the eyes, nose, throat, and skin’

    hepothoholgy? I couldn’t find anywhere. Sorry. If you know exact spelling, I will look for it more.


  2. Hi under13ds Soon has answered about xylene pretty well. I’ll just add that it is used in histopathology as a solvent for staining sometime – so it is one of the chemicals used when we process slides that have tissue samples on them. There are a whole bunch of different special stains that can be used, depending what the patholgist is looking for, each one will react with different cell types or structures so that they can be seen more clearly. If you just looked at a piece of tissue on a microscope slide without staining it you wouldn’t be ableto tell much about it, so we need to do stain it first.

    The most common stain used in histopathology (which is the department in pathology that looks at tissues and organs both whole and microscopically, its these guys who do autopsies!) is called haematoxylin and eosin. All tissue samples will be satined with this one which will cause the nucleus of cells to turn blue/purple and other cell structures different shades of red/orange. Once the pathologist has seend the H&E slide, and sometimes just based on the type of tissue and the clinical history they will request the scientists to do other types of speicial stains that can highlight other types of cells so they can make a diagnosis.

    Lots of the chemicals used in histopathology are quite nasty, with xylene being just one example of a solvent used. Most of the processing and staining in histo is done under an extraction hood which removes the fumes from the room away from where the scientist can breathe them in.


  3. Soon and Kym have gone into a fair bit of detail about xylene being a solvent, which is a type of liquid used to dissolve things in to make a solution. There are lots of different types of solvents, which can be used for all sorts of chemicals and uses, but xylene is most commonly used for histology.

    Now for the second part of your question! The closest I can think of is Hepatology, which is the study of the liver, gallbladder and pancreas. (Hepar/Hepato mean liver, like hepatitis).


  4. do you guys have xylene at school? just be careful, it’s really bad for your brain cells to breathe it in and always use gloves when you touch it! Although…..we have to wear special gloves because it eats through normal latex gloves.

    We use it all the time when we stain tissue sections. When we collect an organ from a mouse, we first put it in formalin, which ‘fixes’ the tissue. That way it doesn’t rot, and everything inside the cells stays the way it was because formalin crosslinks everything.

    Then, we put the fixed tissue in a block of paraffin, just like candle wax. That makes it easier to cut thin slices. We then dip our tissue sections in the xylene to get rid of the wax and oils! It’s like a cleaner for tissue sections.



  1. oops, forgot the hepatogology bit.

    Pathology means study of a disease. The Greeks came up with it. Pathos means “feeling/suffering” and logia means “the study of”. So it’s the study of suffering.

    Anything starting with hepatic or hepato means liver. Again the Greeks….their word for liver is “hepar”.